Archive for June, 2011

Fail fast. Fail often. Fail spectacularly. Fail worse than everyone else. Fail like there’s no tomorrow. If you fail enough, success is guaranteed. What a crock!

I don’t disagree with the premise behind failure worship. I’m a huge fan of dogged persistence, tireless pursuit and continuous improvement. I practice all three in my work every day because frankly, I don’t know how to do it any other way. Nothing about what I do is fast, easy, cheap, simple or obvious. But it drives me bonkers the way we worship, promote and advocate the embrace of failure in such stupid ways.

The emphasis is all wrong. It’s like assuming all you’ve got to do to win the marathon is get the lead for the first 100 yards. More failure is seen as better than less, under the misleading assumption that it will lead inexorably to success.

This view ignores the fundamental reality that you have to learn from failure, and apply what you learn to the next attempt. If you don’t, then there’s no path leading from repeated failures to success. A single broken link breaks the whole chain. And what is missing from the cult of failure is that it often is to learn the right lesson from a failure. Worse, there’s no practical advice on how to suss the lesson out. The implicit assumption is that all lessons will be obvious, but it isn’t necessarily so. In fact, it can be difficult. Often the data is contradictory. How do you draw valid conclusions from conflicted results?

Ask anyone who’s been through a major, life-altering failure. Take it from me, nothing is automatic. It may take years to recover and there’s no little red reset button. I was one of the many agency owners whose businesses were vaporized by the dot com bust 10 years ago. We threw every innovation we knew at the problem of winning new business. We failed and failed and failed again. Because we were working in the mindset of a market that no longer existed. Our market had suddenly imploded by about two-thirds. Nothing we tried was effective, because for a while, no one was buying anything. Our real failure was not recognizing how quickly and completely the steep downturn in the tech sector had broken our business model. But that was a doozy. We had to retrench and retool.

Too many people seem to be seeking “permission to fail.” It does relieve a lot of the pressure to perform. In our instant gratification-oriented society, this is welcome news. Hey, relax! Don’t kill yourself. Just keep failing until you get it right. Things will work out. Is this ambition or slacking? Is this just another example of wishful thinking? Are we deluding ourselves? Or are we just too lazy?

In so many fields today our culture has no middle, no gray areas. Only extremes. But the middle and the gray areas are where real life happens. What a shame when we don’t recognize it.

Actually a few people do. Like Seth Godin. In Poke the Box, he does a masterful job arguing for taking the initiative, being accountable, making stuff happen, owning your failures and learning from them. But he puts failure worship in the right context. True, it’s not to be feared, it’s a (hopefully) temporary impediment to be overcome. But it’s not a “goal,” heaven forbid, nor an acceptable outcome to be glorified. Godin astutely nails the Nike psyche by admonishing us that no, it’s not “Just Do It.” It should be only, “Do It.” There is no “just” because it’s damned hard work.

I know enough about integrating all this stuff to be a little dangerous.

But the one thing I haven’t figured out is vacations.

I love to travel and each year I plan one big blow-out vacation. This week, my wife and I will heading to Scandinavia and Russia for two weeks. On top of this grand adventure, I get to meet two of my best Twitter buddies, Jon Buscall and Kimmo Linkama (stay tuned!).

And while I’m filled with anticipation for this much-needed break, I’m also filled with anxiety because ever since the dawn of the social web and starting my own business I have not done vacations well. I’m probably not the only member of this club?

One thing I have learned about myself — I’m a hard worker but can only keep up the pace with regular vacations. When I don’t get a break, I’m less effective and begin to get irritable.

And while I have done a pretty good job TAKING vacations, I have not done a great job ENJOYING vacations.

Leading up to last year’s trip I had to complete some intense customer projects, which seemed to multiply as departure day approached. I had to get my blogging house in order … and of course I had to start planning for the trip. So by the time I left, I was exhausted.

During the trip I allowed myself to get sucked back into the digital tsunami. I could not ignore customer emails that started with “I know you’re in Europe but … ” And by the end of the trip I was already worrying about the wall of work and emails I would have to deal with when I got back.

So this year, I’m learning from my mistakes. I did a better job setting expectations with customers. I’m simply going to be unavailable for two weeks.

I’m turning my email stream over to my virtual assistant so it will be more managable when I get home.

On most of my trip, I won’t even have a wireless signal.

I’ll probably try to do a little tweeting when I’m gone because I enjoy that, but I’m changing my bio to read “I’m not ignoring you, I’m on vacation.”

And I’m turning the blog over to you! Tomorrow starts the Second Annual Community Week on {grow}. I’ve asked some long-time, loyal readers to take over the blogging responsibilties for a few days. After all, if we’re a community, I don’t need to do the heavy lifting ALL the time right? : )

We have a great line-up of exciting topics lined up that will present some interesting and diverse views. Please support these folks with your tweets and comments — maybe next year you’ll be a Community Week blogger!

Any way, I’m off to relax and I’m sure will be filled with lots of great ideas and stories to share with you when I return! Au revoir!

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-Mark Schaefer